How to Get Kids to Eat and Love Kale

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Finely_chopped_kale

Do your kids beg you to feed them kale or other dark green, leafy vegetables?  

Probably not.

I confess that I don’t particularly like to eat kale when it is in large pieces.  But, after planting it for the first time in my vegetable garden this year, I was determined to learn to enjoy eating this vegetable along with my kids.  The question was how?

dark green, leafy vegetables

I decided to take my freshly picked kale and cut it into narrow strips, about 1/3 of an inch wide.

radishes

I did the same with radishes from the garden since some of my kids don’t like them either

radishes and kale

My idea was to make their individual size smaller and then mix them with other leafy greens, hoping that they could blend in with the rest of the salad.

 leaf lettuce ,  iceberg lettuce , cucumbers ,kale and radishes

Salads in our house consist of leaf lettuce from the garden, a little iceberg lettuce (the kid’s favorite), diced cucumbers and finely chopped kale and radishes.

dark green, leafy vegetables

Once mixed together, the kale, along with the radishes, blends in rather nicely as do their flavors.

So, did it work?  Do my kids now like kale?

Well, earlier this week, I overheard them discussing what we were going to have for dinner and my two youngest kids said, “I love kale and radishes”.

You know what?  So do I.

**Have you ever found a way to get your kids to eat certain foods?  If so, please share your experiences with me 🙂

Winter Garden Harvest: I Never Thought I Would Love Kale!

Noelle Johnson, aka, 'AZ Plant Lady' is a author, horticulturist, and landscape consultant who helps people learn how to create, grow, and maintain beautiful desert gardens that thrive in a hot, dry climate. She does this through her consulting services, her online class Desert Gardening 101, and her monthly membership club, Through the Garden Gate. As she likes to tell desert-dwellers, "Gardening in the desert isn't hard, but it is different."
3 replies
  1. Malea Ann
    Malea Ann says:

    I used to just put two to three bite of the objectionable food on his plate and not comment. For days, on occasion weeks, he would ignore it. But then, he would almost always eventually eat it without even really realizing he was doing so. Now some of the foods he used to HATE are his favorites. 🙂

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